Writing in the [London] Times, columnist Alice Miles analyzes a new UK proposal to get people off disability benefits. The proposal has generated a lot of enthusiasm, she says, but it won’t work unless real jobs are offered.

When people demand that the disabled - and I’m talking about the genuinely incapacitated here, not the malingerers - should work, they generally mean that they should do rubbish jobs for rubbish money. Fill the call centres with cripples. Dogsbody jobs for the deaf; boring ones for the blind, they can’t see anyway. But where are the decent job offers?

… few employers are prepared to offer decent jobs to the disabled. And it’s obvious why. They immediately become trapped in official rules that make a disabled person too big a risk for employers outside the public sector.

… we need a shift in culture and attitude, among the disabled and among those who could employ them: sticks and carrots for everyone. At the moment, the disabled seem to be taking a hell of a lot of stick.

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